A large part of the work of professional psychologists involves implementing programs to help others change their problematic behaviours. This assignment involves changing a behaviour that is a problem of self control. In order for you to gain an appreciation of how difficult it can be to modify someone’s behaviour, even when they themselves wish to modify it, you will first be attempting to modify your own.
Written in the form of a psychological report—with an abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and reference sections—the aim of this assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to develop, implement and evaluate your own behaviour management strategy.

Step 1: Setting the objective and recording a baseline
You will begin by selecting a particular behaviour that you are seeking to change

Step 2: Behaviour management strategy
Having completed your baseline, you will implement a behaviour management strategy, recording the frequency of when the behaviour occurs.

Step 3: Writing the report
The outcomes of your behaviour management program are to be written up as an empirical research report using a single case design. The report should be approximately 1,250 words in length. Reminder: The title, abstract and references are not included in the word count. Your references should be formatted according to the APA guidelines.
Your report should begin with a brief theoretical discussion that describes why the problematic behaviour may have arisen and the principles that you will employ in your behaviour management program. It is important to note that while you may not be able to locate any research on the specific behaviour that you are seeking to modify, you will find theoretical and empirical research on issues such as strategies for the successful modification of behaviour. Issues can include things such as the use of reinforcers; contingency contracts; continuous reinforcement strategies; and the modification of antecedents.
In the case of this research report, your research question (hypothesis) will relate to the expectation that the behaviour will be modified, following the implementation of the strategies that you discuss as part of your introduction.
In your discussion, you should consider the implications of the results that you obtained, in terms of the theoretical principles that you described in your introduction and the reinforcement properties that were present before the intervention was implemented. You should moreover recommend any modifications that might be necessary to improve the success of the program or allow it to be generalised to others.
Important note: An Assignment 2 student exemplar has been provided for you in the ‘Supporting resources’ section of this assignment. Use this as a guide to help structure your final report. (attachment 1)

The participant
The participant in this case is yourself. In your method section, include a ‘participants’ section, a description of the behaviour to be modified, how you measured this behaviour, and a description of the type of intervention that you implemented. You don’t need to undertake inferential statistical analyses in the present study. It is best if you represent the two stages of the study (baseline, intervention) as two separate sections of the one figure. This enables a visual comparison to be made quickly and accurately.

Developing your behaviour management strategy
It is important that as you begin and work through your assignment, that you refer to and use the Behaviour management strategy: Stages of your program (attachment2) resource. This resource has been designed as a step-by-step guide that outlines how you can develop, implement, and evaluate your behaviour management strategy for the purpose of this assignment. We have included a number of suggested Apps in the ‘Supporting resources’ section that you might use to assist you in recording your behaviour and/or changing your behaviour.